The Sunset Junkies: Beam Me Up

When it comes to my list of favorite colors, Sunset is definitely on it. It’s peaceful and pretty, marvelous and magical, colorful and comforting. Of course, as it relates to sunsets, there is more than meets the eye, literally. Some of the sun’s rays are scattered by airborne molecules and modicum, skewing the final color we see, and because blue and green are shorter compared to the longer orange and red wavelengths, and the sun’s path through the atmosphere is longer during sunset, those are the two colors we typically tend to see. The Sunset Junkies are also four very different beams that work together to give us something worth seeing.

Lima, Ohio’s longest-running original rock group, the Sunset Junkies are in their 11th year of rock riffs, reggae, and funk flavors. Featuring Craig Bauman on lead vocals and rhythm guitar, Joe Swora on lead guitar and backing vocals, Jeremy Patterson on bass and backing vocals, and Mike Rogers on drums, they self-describe their sound as “Kings of Leon, Led Zeppelin, and Sublime getting into a head-on collision and becoming best friends because of it.” Between their three albums and one EP, “Our fans and audiences kind of get taken on a ride when they hear us,” Swora says. Motivated mostly by Metal, Hard Rock, Reggae, and Funk, “We wear our influences on our sleeve,” Joe shares, “some songs are hard rock riffs, some have reggae influences, some are heavy blues, but it’s all rock and roll.”

They’ve gone through some amicable member changes, as the band was originally a 3 member cover group in 2006, who began writing their own material and recorded and released their first self-titled album in 2008. Not long after, they decided to add a 4th member, a lead guitarist, to switch up the sound, and in 2009 the four members began making new music – “Therapy” was released in May of 2011 followed by the “Fantasy World EP” released in 2013. 2015 saw another member modification, and the Sunset Junkies decided to self-record and produce a new album, “Dragon Tooth,” released in 2016 and commemorating their 10th anniversary, “a good end to the first decade of music.” Now immersed in their 11th year of music making, Swora says they’ve got “plenty more irons in the fire.”

Even though all the members might represent a different wavelength of musical influences, the Sunset Junkies shine together. They are special because each song has a different sound – each band member’s beam is scattered throughout every album. You can catch up with the Sunset Junkies on several social sites, including Twitter. You can also see them at their next show, on July 29th at Oregon Express in Dayton, Ohio, with Evil Eye Gypsy and Stella’s Demise.